Share story

The death of America’s 41st president has inspired a flood of commentary making comparisons between George H.W. Bush and President Donald Trump — and the country’s 45th president is getting the worst of it.

Bush’s greatest accomplishment may be the way he brought the Cold War to a peaceful end by avoiding triumphalism and supporting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s tricky maneuvering to reform his own country and set free satellite nations in Eastern Europe. It is hard to imagine Trump summoning that kind of diplomatic skill and subtlety and impossible to think he would not have gloated over the demise of the U.S.S.R. It’s just not who he is.